Getting Started with Personal Branding

The real estate industry has never been more competitive than it is today. Thanks to the internet, the widespread adoption of smartphones, and the ever-increasing popularity of social media sites, the real estate playing field has essentially been leveled. To successfully attract new clients, close more deals, and continue growing your business today, you have to do more to stand out from competition:

You can’t just be the best salesperson, you have to be the best resource

You can’t just network with people, you have to be the best at building authentic relations with people everywhere—both offline and online

You can’t just rely on traditional advertising, you have to invest in new channels like social media marketing, content marketing, and video marketing

You can’t just call people over the phone, you have to be willing to send them text messages, instant messages, Facebook messages, emails and tweets

To achieve all of this, you have to invest in personal brand. This guide will give you all the information, tips, tools, and resources you need to develop a strong personal brand.

Identify your Audience— Before you get too far into thinking about who you are and what makes you different, it’s important to first think about the audience you’re trying to reach. To start, think about who your ideal customers are, what they do, what problems they have, what motivates them to buy, where they spend their time online and offline, and how you can effectively build relationships with them.

Focus on what makes you different— Your next step is to start thinking about what makes you different than your competitors. The answers you come up with will ultimately help you shape the core of your personal brand.

Hire a designer— In order to build a strong personal brand, you need to develop a strong kit of branding visuals that can be used everywhere you plan to market yourself

Secure your domain— If you haven't already, it’s highly recommended that you purchase and register [yourname].com. Securing the rights to your full name domain is one of the easiest ways to maintain and control what shows up in google when people search your name.

Build your blog & start sharing value— A big part of building your personal brand will involve doing what you can to leverage yourself as a helpful resource to your target audience. One of the easiest ways to start sharing value with your current and ideal customers is by launching a blog on your website or investing some of your marketing budget into content marketing

Start participating in social media— In addition to blogging, you’ll also want to start engaging with your current clients and target audience on social media sites. Before you dive in though, it’s important that you take the time to build profiles and pages that align with your personal brand you’re working to build. That means utilizing the professional graphics and visuals you had made in step 3 to get the answers you came up with in step 2.

Find offline opportunities— At the end of the day, personal branding is about getting your name and face out there in front of people. There’s plenty of work to do online, but in order to truly build a successful personal brand, you need to also spend time participating in offline events like networking groups, Chamber of Commerce events, festivals, farmers markets among others.

Invest in the right tools— There are a number of tools you can use to boost productivity and success when it comes to building your personal brand such as Typeform, Mention, Buffer, 99designs, Upwork, Behance, Buzzsumo, A Small Orange and more (visit the full guide here to learn specifics about each of these.

Fine tune your strategy & go all in— To build a long-lasting personal brand, you have to be consistent, you have to try a lot of different strategies, and you have to be willing to fail. Once your personal brand is off the ground, go all in and embrace the identity you’ve created for yourself.